The Chutzpah of Israeli Tent Protests

Mohammad Al Kurd is dead. An old paralyzed man in a wheelchair, his wife Fawzia, Um Kamel, and their five children and their families, casted out of their home in Sheikh Jarrah in the East of Jerusalem. Went live in a tent and Mohammed died….That is what happens to one in Palestine who puts up a tent.…

The hypocrisy of Israeli tent protests is going beyond every imagination.

While Israeli’s left is protesting the high rents, the rightists come and demolish their tents, and both hit the headlines! While the world, completely ignorant (kept by propaganda or just because thinking of yourself seems to make some tired) forgets a very important issue: both the right or left Israeli manifestors, don’t care a damn about all the Palestinians WITHOUT a home nor is no one complaining about the FREE HOMES “Israel” took in the process of ethnic cleansing Palestine of it’s original inhabitants. Not even mentioning with not one word, this process of hostile, violent and sometimes deadly take-overs of Palestinian houses goes on even today… Not even minding the atrocities and violations of human rights by rightists as well as leftist choosen government of “Israel” transgressing (international) laws and human, moral and common sense or values every day on it’s neighbours.

Maybe both right and left, should reconsider the reason for the so called high rents, for it is the State’s need of security against “imaginary” threats, the by zion created “Islamophobia”, the from childhood funneled up paranoia which seems to be the reason and need of Occupying Israel to invest billions in so called “security”. Apparently even until it’s own people cannot afford rent anymore and some (as we believe media) even live underground in garages.

Below a story about a home eviction of the Al-Kurd Family to put all these protests of Israel in the right perspective. For you should be informed what happens if a Palestinian puts up a tent. Not out of protest, not out of “civil disobedience”, but simple because a zionist entity took over his home for free to live in and whole families are thrown on the street for the sake of the Lebensraum of Israel:

Are Israeli not thinking about the costs, the “State of Israel” is wasting on imaginary threats of Palestine.?

Are Israeli not thinking about the costs, of an Operation Cast lead, which cost over 1400 people’s lives, demolished thousands of homes in Gaza, while for this “budget” or of the daily military machine which has to be deployed against imaginary and funneld up imaginary threats, thousands of homes could have been build, without no deaths at all.

Are Israeli never worried, about what living under this Apartheid and military regime does with their own minds, children or health? Shouting for healthcare and equality, while Palestinians are structurally denied access to healthcare, prevented, or even die in the effort getting to an hospital?

Are Israeli never worried, the chemical weapons they use are not discriminating? The depleted uranium knows no borders. In the end, all these weapons will sicken them and their offspring too.

How long does it take, before Israeli recognize, building walls, shelters, bunkers and machines of war, bombing daily and sustaining the ongoing warfare and genocide cost not only money but lives on all sides, a way, which will lead to no justice for no one at all. Only ongoing empoverishing, untill the day it is visible at the teeth of an Israeli if he owns money or not, able to pay a dentist or not

Do Israeli think about: “We bombed the hell out of Gaza’s sleeping children every night, we fought for our rights but not for theirs, we paid tax for demolishing their homes and we end up without homes of ourselves?”

Mister Mohammad al Kurd can’t think no more. Not even about this.

Mr al Kurd is dead.

Just 55 years old – younger than both of my parents – he died in hospital last night, just two weeks after Israeli police evacuated his family from their house in East Jerusalem. His health had been poor for a long time, but he lived in his home, shuffling about in his pyjamas, sitting out in the sunny courtyard for much of the day. But when 50 Israeli police came to their home at 2am on Sunday 9th November, first arresting the 8 internationals who were staying there, ready to lock-on in such an event, and then forcing him and his wife, Fawzieh, from their beds, dragging them out of the house without letting them even take a change of clothes, rendering them – in one fell swoop – homeless, he had to be hospitalised immediately.

Fawzieh has since been living in a tent on a nearby football pitch. It’s a protest tent, designed to garner media attention, and as such Israeli authorities have been bulldozing it every other day. Luckily, as it’s a tent, it’s easy to put back up again. A small moment of comedic relief came a few days ago, when they also bulldozed the surrounding fence, which was erected not by the Al-Kurd family, but by Jerusalem city council.

Fawzieh is a strong, strong woman. She has been a major force behind this whole campaign – a campaign not only to save her house, but to save all the other 28 houses in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood that face the same fate as hers. For many months now she has opened up her house to the general public, letting it become the site of a media circus. Night after night she has explained her story to countless delegations and solidarity groups. Day after day she showed journalists around the area, with grace and alacrity. She developed great media savvy, imploring cameras “Wayn al democrati, habibi? Wayn al democrati?” (Where is the democracy, darling? Where is the democracy?). All this while caring for a sick husband and cooking two meals a day for the internationals who were camped out in her courtyard for months.

Right now, even in her grief she has set up a public mourning site at her tent. For the next few hours she will receive visits from the hundreds of people who will undoubtedly come to pay their respects, despite the rawness of her loss.

How the state killed Mr Al Kurd

Mohammad Al Kurd moved into his house in East Jerusalem with his family when he was 3 years old, in 1956. Theirs and 27 other houses were built as part of a joint project between United Nations Refugee and Welfare Association (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government, for refugees who had fled the Nakba (1948 war that created 700 000 Palestinian refugees). The families were granted ownership of the houses in exchange for giving up their food rations.

After the 1967 war, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, two Israeli settler groups, the Oriental Jews Association and The Knesseth Yisrael Association, made a claim that they had owned the land prior to 1948, and, in 1972, got the land registered in their names with the Israeli Land Registrar. Then in 1982, the lawyer hired to represent all of the refugee families in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood, Tosya Cohen, unbeknownst to the families, made an agreement with the settler associations to recognise the settlers’ ownership of the land in return for status for the families as “protected residents”. It’s unknown why he did this, whether he was just stupid, or was paid off, or was ideologically on the wrong side to begin with. At any rate, the families fired him as soon as they found out what he had done, and denounced his agreement, but it was, in many senses, too late.

Despite the fact that in 2006 the Israeli High Court found the settler associations’ ownership papers to be falsified, and compelled the removal of their names from the Lands Registrar, the Israeli Land Registration department then refused to rezone the land so as to register the land in the true owners’ names. Further, the Israeli courts refused to allow any of this evidence into the separate case concerning the Al Kurds’ eviction, and so on 16th July 2008 the Israeli Supreme Court issued an eviction notice for the Al Kurds, for not paying rent to the settlers associations.

In the meantime, while the family was in Jordan in 2001, getting medical treatment for Mr Al Kurd, the Jerusalem municipality gave the keys to the apartment they had built as an extension to their home to settlers – under the pretext that it had been built illegally. Ironically, the usual excuse for housing demolitions is that, being built without planning permission, they are unsafe to inhabit. The residents are being protected from themselves. In this case the annex was unsafe for the Al Kurd family, but safe for the rotation of settler families who passed through there.

As such, for the past seven years, the Al Kurd family had been living with settlers in their home – in the annex they built for their son and his family. This brought with it all sorts of abuse, even from the small children; as well as harassment from Israeli police and security guards employed by the settlers associations to patrol the property.

The settlers occupying the annex have also received an eviction notice to evacuate the property – but Israeli police have chosen not to carry-out the order. In fact, the same day the Al Kurds were evicted, instead of evicting the settlers as well, more settlers just moved in to occupy the entire house.

All of this has not been the result of a series of accidents and miscalculations. This is part a deliberate strategy to create the “facts on the ground” necessary to preclude the possibility of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. This collusion between settlers and the Israeli state is the basis of the well-publicised plan to “Judaise” East Jerusalem. Since 2004, more than 1200 Palestinians have been made homeless in East Jerusalem alone through home demolitions. There are currently more than 80 Palestinian houses slated for demolition. If the remaining 27 Palestinian houses in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood are evicted, those buildings too will be demolished to make way for a 200 unit settler apartment complex. This will complete the ring of settler apartment buildings needed to effectively annex the old city in East Jerusalem forever. The Al Kurds are just one family victimised by a series of policies whose ultimate aim is the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem.

And now Mr Al Kurds is dead. A severe heart-attack. He might not have been taken out with a bullet, or a bomb, but he was killed by the Israeli injustice system all the same.

In another Palestinian Tent event on August 8 2009 at noon, about 40 ultra-orthodox jewish squatters, the Israeli terrorists generally known as “Siknaj”, attacked the tent of the Al-Ghawi family and beat and wounded four members of these families, who were forcibly expelled from their own house on last 2 August 2009. The criminal settlers, or “Siknaj”, were wearing black talars and hats, and used stones, sticks, and chairs in their criminal attack. The victims were three children aged between 10 – 13 and a woman. One of them was left bleeding in critical condition.

Naser Al-Gawi, one of those robbed of his house by the israeli government, said that a large detachment of Israeli police came to the place of the assault, and that rather than preventing the criminal attacks of the Siknaj, they protected them and arrested Khaled Al- Gawi, aged 40, another victim of the israeli theft. Al-Gawi denied that his family had provoked the Siknaj settlers. He said that the settlers wanted to remove their tents, which they set up near their houses, which are now occupied by the siknaj. He confirmed that he will not leave the area until he is able to return to his house.

On August 2 2009, the Israeli criminal forces forcibly terrorized and expelled two Palestinian families, Al-Gawi and Hannoun from their houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem after they demolished the gates of the houses (11 houses, eight houses belong to Aberd Al-Fattah Hannoun and his sons, and three houses belong to Maher Hannoun and his brothers), and forced the families to get out under the threat of murdering them. The criminal armed Israeli police pointed their guns at the civilians and denied them the right to take the necessary things for their children, or to remove from their furniture and other belongings.

Few hours after the Palestinian family’s expulsion, a truck of ultra orthodox jews, Siknaj, came to live in the Palestinian houses. The Siknaj and the criminal forces of Israel threw the furniture of the two families out of their homes and moved their belonging of the Siknaj to the Palestinian houses, while the Israeli police stood to guard to protect them from any attempt from the Palestinian families to recover their property. Before that, on November 2008, the Israeli military border police forcibly expelled Mahmoud Al-Kurd, an old paralyzed man on a wheelchair, his wife Fawzia, Um Kamel, and their five children and their families, from their home in Sheikh Jarrah in the East of Jerusalem.

Mohammed Al-Kurd had lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood from 1956 until the morning of November 9, 2008 when the Israeli police enforced a court order that evicted them. Few days after this expulsion, Mahmoud Al-Kurd died of heart attack in his protest tent in the neighborhood of his house. The criminal Israeli Zionist organization police has since then destroyed the tent of the Al-Kurd family several times.

The Vice President of the European Parliament, Luisa Morgantini, had sent a letter for Al-Kurd family after their expulsion from their house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The same text of the letter was sent to all MEs of the European Parliament. Morgantini wrote:

Dear all,

You may remember that last Thursday during the plenary session we passed a urgency resolution on the expulsion of the Al Kurd family from the house they bought and lived in since 1956 in East Jerusalem. A group of extremist settlers claimed ownership to that house and 26 other houses in the same neighbourhood, on the basis of an Ottoman title deed dating from 1880, the authenticity of which is doubtful and which is also disputed by United States. The project of the Jewish associations is to build 200 hundreds colonial units that will replace the Palestinian homes.

Mohammed Kamal Al Kurd, the husband of Umm Kamal, did not survive, yes he was already ill, but the expulsion from the house, and the destruction by the Israeli police of the tents where they were staying after being expelled from their home , has been unbearable to him. He died in the Hospital.
Best regards,

Luisa Morgantini
Vice President of the European Parliament

Currently, a total of around 28 Palestinian families of East Jerusalem face Israeli expulsion from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The Palestinian families had lived in their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood since the days when east Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations, upon contract with Jordan allotted them the land after they became refugees when they were expelled from their homes in west Jerusalem by Zionists during the 1948 war.

Despite the UN and the Palestinian denials, and despite the fact that the lawyer of the Sheikh Jarrah families found that there is no evidence in the Turkish archives that the Siknaj are the owners of the land and the houses, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the expulsion of the Palestinian families following an appeal by the Zionists Nahalat Shimon settler group, which claimed that the Siknaj lived in, or bought plots in these areas before the establishment of Israel itself and by the partition resolution of 1948.

Two third of the houses in the West of Jerusalem belong to Palestinian families whose owners are denied the right to retake them. Some of these owners have appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to regain their property, but always this court has always rejected their appeals, thus in fact creating injustice and supporting crimes.

What the Israeli Supreme Court and the Zionists organization “State of Israel” must remember and never forget is that we, all the Palestinians will NEVER give up and never forget, and that FOR EVER there are tens of thousands, millions of us who have their land and the homes in occupied Palestine, since 1948 and prior to that, and that we have the documents which prove our ownership.

Over 750.000 of us Palestinians were forcibly expelled in 1948 by the Israeli Zionists, turning us into refugees in Arab countries and in the Diaspora, and that also millions of us live in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. We all have the right to return and to demand our property back. The Siknaj will be institutionalized or worse, and the whole criminal enterprise called “Israel” will go, and after that ALL jews of the world will be forever held in contempt everywhere, even in countries where today they are highly respected. Not we, but your crimes against us will destroy you. [Kawther]

There are many houses and land belonging to Palestinians, which since 1948 – and until now, have been stolen and occupied by these European and American jews, which today are occupied by Israeli ministers. One of these thieves is the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who lives in a house stolen from a Palestinian family in the Al-Talibia Arab district in the west of Jerusalem.

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. In 1967 Israel captured and illegally annexed Jerusalem during the six day war. We Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state that includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and so it will be with or without the consent of the Siknaj, who better start packing.